FAU Libraries Positioned for More
Distinction with New Recorded Sound Archives

BOCA RATON, FL(August 24, 2010) – Florida Atlantic
University Libraries used the tens of thousands of rare and
historic recordings it received recently from the estate of a
Cleveland music collector to create a recorded sound archive, and
it plans to further distinguish itself among the nation’s top
libraries by digitizing the recordings and putting them
online.

Among the treasures the FAU Libraries’ staff and volunteers
have inventoried are 50,000 vintage 78 rpm recordings, including
a collection of vi
sually stunning picture records,
historic radio transcriptions, including President
Roosevelt’s speech to the U.S. Congress following Pearl
Harbor; and hundreds of original recordings by Italian tenor
Enrico Caruso.

The vintage 78
recordings donated by the family of Jack Saul, who died in May
2009 at 86, along with FAU Libraries’
extensive holdings of Jazz recordings
and Judaic music, inspired the rapidly growing Recorded
Sound Archives at FAU Libraries, which now has more than 150,000
phonograph records and other sound recordings.

“The Recorded Sound
Archives makes us one of the top 20 libraries in the nation for
sound recordings,” said Dr. William Miller, dean
of Libraries at FAU. “The word is
out among collectors, individuals and educational institutions
that we are interested in preserving and digitizing rare and
historic recordings.”

Vintage records, also called 78 rpms because of their playing
speed of 78 revolutions per minute, were produced between 1901
and the mid-1950s. Music,speeches, radio transcriptions and even
movie soundtracks were recorded in this format. The recordings
were created with technology that is no longer used, so the 78s
are considered artifacts in the recording industry.

“The Jack Saul collection was perhaps one of the
largest such collections in the country not already owned by a
library,” said Miller. “His vintage records greatly
expand the panoply of recorded material we have that will be
useful in instruction and research.”

Saul’s family also donated some
of his enormous collection to the Library of Congress and
the Cleveland Orchestra. Unpacking Saul’s collection at the
Boca Raton-based library has
been daunting, but staff and volunteers
at The Recorded Sound Archives are digitizing the materials, and
the records eventually will be online.

“Our
plan is to create digitized collections of recordings by some
legendary performers, like
Enrico Caruso, Al Jolson or
Jascha Heifetz, and then make it available to listeners through
the FAU Libraries website,” said Dr. Maxine Schackman,
administrative director of The Recorded Sound Archives.

Part of this
rich collection of vintage recordings are 32 of the known 67
titles produced as Vogue Picture Records between May 1946 and
April 1947 by Sav-Way Industries. The 10-inch picture records
feature lesser-known big band, popular and country artists, and
because of their colorful and risqué pictures were
stand-outs among the drab black shellac records that dominated
the market at the time. Illustrations of musicians, western
scenes, themes and images of love and courtship are embedded in
transparent vinyl on both sides of the record, creating a
recording almost too pretty to spin on a phonograph
player.

“
I’ve never seen anything like
them. I think it is possible that we might have one of the most
extensive collections of these rare recordings,” said
Schackman.

The
Recorded Sound Archives is also creating an inventory of the more
than 20,000 jazz recordings donatedby Dr. Henry
Ivey in 2006 and recently
transferred to the library from
FAU’s department of music. Volunteers are entering
information about the recordings into a database so that musicians
and others will be able to perform a search.

The
Judaica Sound Archives (JSA), created
in 2005, established FAU Libraries as an international
leader in the collection and digitization of early phonograph
recordings. It now boasts a collection of more than 15,000
non-duplicated recordings.
Its website (
www.fau.edu/jsa)
offers listeners over 11,000 songs in English, Hebrew and
Yiddish.

“Our
long-term goal is to make the music and voice on these recordings
available to listeners. Because some of
the 78s are in the public domain we can
put the music on our websites,” said Schackman.
“
Those by Jewish artists are already being
processed, digitized and made available through the JSA
website.”

For more information on The Recorded
Sound Archives at FAU Libraries or to volunteer, contact Dr.
Maxine Schackman at 561-297-3765 ormschackm@fau.edu
orNathan Tinanoff at 561-297-2207
ortinanoff@fau.edu. Information on the collections also
is available atwww.library.fau.edu/rsa

-FAU-

About
Florida Atlantic University:

Florida
Atlantic University opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public
university in Florida. Today, the University serves more than
28,000 undergraduate and graduate students on seven campuses and
sites. Building on its rich tradition as a teaching university,
with a world-class faculty, FAU hosts 10 colleges:the
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts
& Letters, the College of Business, the College for Design
and Social Inquiry, the College of Education, the College
of Engineering & Computer Science, the Graduate
College, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, the Charles E.
Schmidt College of Medicine, the Christine E. Lynn College of
Nursing and theCharles E. Schmidt College of Science. For more information,
visitwww.fau.edu.